"(...)"I remember a maxing day – pre jet skis – on the Gold Coast back in the mid to late 90’s and I was watching Luke Egan prepare to surf big Tweed Bar in the 12-foot range. His plan was pretty simple. Paddle out through the Tweed River on the Fingal side of the rockwall, and let the outgoing tide suck him out to sea. From there he would use his land marks and find his take-off spot for the lefts and the first wave that came through, no matter what it looked like, he was going it.

In his words, getting the shit beaten out of him was never as bad as his mind would make it out to be, so get it out of the way nice and early, then enjoy the rest of the session knowing the worst has already happened. There was of course a hell of a lot more to his method than the apparent madness of pulling into a 12-foot closeout a mile out to sea surrounded by strong currents, cliffs and rocks.

Luke had studied the Bar for a solid hour. He suited up and his eyes never left the lineup, not for one second. He had an exit plan for where he wanted to come in, and he had backup plans, A, B and C in place should something go wrong. This planning fuelled Luke’s confidence, so he knew he could take the first wave and go from there.

"(...) Brazil has more than 4,000 miles of coastline, and Brazilians have been surfing its waves at least since the Australian surfer Peter Troy gave a demonstration in Rio de Janeiro in 1964. So why the sudden dominance? The answer is that the country itself has changed. Following the rocky decades of the 1980s and ’90s, when financial shocks and political instability battered the economy and inflation reached peaks of more than 2,000 percent a year, Brazil in the 2000s experienced more than a decade of stability and growth. The abysmal gap between rich and poor narrowed a little, and the middle class ballooned from about 15 percent of the population in the early ’80s to nearly a third by 2012. (...)"
E já que estamos no Brasil, por lá fiquemos. Lembram-se de na rubrica anterior vos ter contado do "dúbio" acordo da WSL com a GloboSat? No TheFreeRide Voice, o inevitável Craig Braithwaite, com a inestimável ajuda do Júlio Adler, vai agora ainda mais fundo no assunto, abrindo uma ferida dolorosa, cuja leitura é imprescindível para o total entendimento da questão.

"(...) A source within Globosat confirmed they sent two teams to Snapper Rocks, one mainstream free-to-air team and another for the cable network (Globosat). They were so disenchanted with all of surfing’s going on hold, waiting around waiting for waves, going on hold again etc… and then when the surf was on, it was stop-start in the water with long waits times between waves. So much so, all Globosat sent to Bells Beach to cover the surfing was one lone cameraman. The same source also confirmed Globosat paid $700,000 for the first year, $900,000 for the second and 1-million for the third year of the deal. Not the kind of money which will help keep the WSL out of the red over the course of a season with four events still without sponsors. And hardly the money worthy of a sport claiming it has a 1.6 billion audience. (...)"
Para fechar o capítulo da competição, o ranger solitário Stephen Shearer, aka The Outsider, esclarece-nos a todos: a maior parte dos formatos de competição estão experimentados. Podem não ser usados há muito tempo, mas já foram usados. Onde é que Shearer escreve? No The FreeRide Voice, pois claro. E quão bons são os títulos que dá às suas crónicas?!

"(...)Mobile events? In 1979 2SM Surfabout airlifted the final 16 from a flat Sydney to pumping Bells before the Internet was even a twitch in Tim Berners-Lees’ nutsack.